Jerry Fodor (1935-2017) in Memoriam †

Jerry Fodor (1935-2017) In Memoriam †

Philosopher of the mind and cognitive psychologist: The possibility of a scientiﬁ c psychology

The interdisciplinary fi eld of cognitive science is in mourning. On 29 November last year, Jerry Fodor passed away at his home in Manhattan. He is universally regarded as one of the fi eld’s leading fi gures thanks to his decisive contributions to the critical- constructive dialogue between disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, linguistics, computing and neuroscience, all of which make up what is known as cognitive science. Trained as a philosopher, he was awarded his doctorate by the University of Princeton (1960) under the supervision of Hilary Putnam and his interest in the nature of the human mind led him to make a post-doctoral visit to Charles Osgood’s laboratory of experimental psychology at the University of Illinois. He eventually settled at the MIT as from 1961, where he took part in the linguistic revolution led by Noam Chomsky. At the MIT, fi rst as an associated professor and then as a full professor, he directed the psycholinguistics laboratory, founded the Center for Cognitive Science and worked with both the Department of Psychology and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, where he taught various courses on cognitive theories alongside Noam Chomsky himself. He remained there until 1986 when he moved to the City University of New York (CUNY) to take up a post as distinguished professor in the Graduate Center, and from there he went to Rutgers University With this wealth of experience, it is hardly surprising that Jerry (New Jersey) as Professor of Philosophy and joint founder, Fodor has been regarded as the prototype of the cognitive scientist with Zenon Pylyshyn, of the Center for Cognitive Science there par excellence (H. Gardner, 1985, The Mind’s New Science: (1991). He was to stay at Rutgers until the end of his academic History of the Cognitive Revolution) and also as the leading career as emeritus professor in 2016. Fodor was a member of the fi gure in the fi eld of philosophy of contemporary psychology American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and vice-president and (The New York Times, 30/11/2017). His initial motivation and president of the American Philosophical Society, and he earned main focus of attention was to fi nd a basis for the scientifi c study numerous distinctions such as the fi rst Jean Nicod Prize (France) of the human mind, to make psychology a truly natural science for philosophy of mind and cognitive philosophy (1993) and the with its own explanatory power and to go beyond the two types honor of giving the John Locke lectures at the University of Oxford of reductionism that have threatened its autonomy as a science: (1997). As well as his numerous publications in the specialized behavioral-operational reductionism (from the mental to the purely journals of various cognitive disciplines, he leaves a legacy to behavioral) and physical reductionism (from the psychological to the scientifi c community of some 20 high-impact books, some of the neurobiological). In Fodor’s opinion, a mentalist (someone who which are among the most cited works of the last half century of believes in the explanatory reality of the mind) can share the unitary cognitive research (for example, Psychological Explanation, 1968; materialist vision of science and, therefore, have no need to accept The Language of Thought, 1975; The Modularity of Mind, 1983; the mind-body ontological dualism put forward by Descartes. Concepts, 1998 and The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way, 2000, all of In his search for an appropriate characterization of the mind, which have been translated into Spanish). Fodor resorts, on the one hand, to the idea of intentionality

245 espoused by the German philosopher and psychologist Franz that has shaped my own scientifi c career and my understanding of Brentano (1838-1917), understood as the property by which psychology as a special natural science: a natural science insofar something has referential content, and, on the other, to the idea as it looks on mental phenomena as genuine manifestations of of computation, or the formal processing of symbols according to particular physical/biological systems; and a special science in that rules, developed by the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912- its level of explanation is not reducible to that of the more basic 1954), which was to give rise to the digital world that is now such a disciplines (neuroscience, biology, chemistry, physics) even though part of our environment. Mental machinery, then, was regarded as it is compatible with them. What is more, Jerry Fodor has left an computational machinery at the service of intentionality. The key indelible impression because of his passionately (emotionally) part in this machinery was mental representation (MR) which, like intellectual nature and his atypical approach to the teaching all symbolic representations, has three characteristic dimensions: of science. As few others have been able to do, he managed to content or meaning, form or the format of the representation and combine rigorous arguments with a direct and colloquial style physical implementation. By virtue of their content, MRs are the peppered with humor, irony and a good supply of literary resources. referents of the mental states (MSs) related to them, so these MSs Once he had accepted and duly justifi ed certain premises, he would (beliefs, desires, motives, plans, etc.) are typically intentional; by try to carry them through to their logical conclusion, however virtue of their form, MRs can interact and combine with others provocative or eccentric this might seem. This was not only how according to certain rules, which means that the mental processes he defended new theoretical positions but also how he questioned (MPs) that operate on them are typically computational. Finally, and shot down theories widely accepted by the establishment in and thanks to the fact that all MRs have a physical implementation psychology and/or philosophy. Despite being a non-conformist (presumably instantiated in something that occurs in the brain), it at heart and having a forceful approach to discussing issues, he can be said that both MSs and MPs have causal consequences and, preferred a thousand times over to say that he did not know (that therefore, can intervene in genuinely scientifi c explanations of is to say, to accept that there were some things that he could not behavior. This is the base of the Representational-Computational explain) than to obligingly give a relativist or pragmatic response Theory of Mind developed by Fodor and which is one of his great (two of the allegedly intellectual features that he most detested). contributions to cognitive science. He was a master of thought (or good reasoning), self-criticism Using this general framework, Fodor dedicated much of his work and controversy, always prepared to try to understand the logic and made highly signifi cant contributions to two main issues. On the of the opposite standpoint, always open to examining counter- one hand, he asked himself what particular type of computational examples and seriously considering the arguments against the system the human mind is, what cognitive architecture and basic position he was defending at any particular time. A skilled sailing capacities it has, and he established a precise, empirically based enthusiast, he enjoyed the challenge of going against the fl ow, a distinction between modular and central components, which was to way of doing things that naturally spread and was picked up by have a considerable impact on subsequent experimental research. his students. All this aside, Jerry Fodor was, most importantly, And on the other hand, he tackled the problem of intentionality – a very good man, polite and well mannered, loyal to his friends, the fundamental property of the mind – by proposing an atomistic quite shy and reserved, which was in stark contrast to his forceful theory of meaning (or content of MRs) that was particularly way of speaking and his ability to intimidate those interlocutors important for the psychological explanation. Along the way, Fodor he caught unawares. He was a great teacher, a major scientist and took every opportunity to participate in the main debates that have a magnifi cent person without ever claiming to be one. It is such a marked the development of psychology over the last 60 years. He shame that he has left us. I imagine he will go down in the history took a stand against Osgood and Skinner’s behaviorism, Piaget’s of cognitive science as the person who most decidedly attempted constructivism, Gibson’s ecological perception, connectionist to clear up the doubts raised by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) about models and Churchland’s neuroscientifi c eliminativism, Block’s the possibility that psychology (as the study of mental life) could semantic holism, Pinker’s massive modularity, and even the acquire the status of a scientifi c discipline. explanatory excesses of natural selection in the theory of evolution Thank you, Jerry, for your leadership. Rest in peace. (Darwin). His critical and non-conformist attitude to the status quo of cognitive science in conjunction with the force of his José Eugenio García-Albea critical arguments earned him a reputation as the enfant terrible Emeritus professor of Psychology of contemporary philosophy and psychology. Even so, this did not Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona) stop the scientifi c community from recognizing that his critical work has been a fundamental incentive for the healthy development Mailing address: Departament de Psicologia, URV of these disciplines. Campus de Sescelades Jerry Fodor’s death is a great loss for cognitive science. It is 43007 Tarragona also a great loss for the author of this text because we have been in E-mail: [email protected] constant touch ever since I had the chance to work under him as a postdoctoral student at MIT 40 years ago. Meeting Jerry Fodor and Note: This is a photograph of Jerry Fodor from Google: https:// trying to get to the bottom of his work is one of those experiences www.google.es/

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